


Breaking Out of the White

by Slyjinks



Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen, originally written around 2000, reposted original fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-02
Updated: 2020-09-02
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:47:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 8
Words: 5,798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26257396
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Slyjinks/pseuds/Slyjinks
Summary: A tale of life, death, and dragons.
Kudos: 1





	1. Broken Worlds

For the first time, she knew fear

She had spent her entire existence in her white little world, comfortable and secure, never questioning, never worrying. But recently things had begun to change. It started with a strange, gnawing feeling that came from within. Strangely, the world no longer nourished her as it once had, although for what reason she could not fathom. It was simply as if her world had grown too old and worn to support her.

As time passed and the gnawing grew, it dawned on her that she would have to put an end to it on her own. But how? If the world would not provide for her, how would she provide for herself? She would have to move beyond the world, but what was there beyond the world? How does one break out of one’s own reality?

The very white walls that once seemed such a comfort now smothered her, and her fear grew. Could she really do this? But she had to try! The one thing she understood best was that she had to make the gnawing go away, so she began scraping against the wall with the only thing she had available: her own claws. 

She scratched and scraped and scrabbled for what seemed like ages as the gnawing feeling grew and with it, her terror. For the longest time her efforts appeared to have no effect but then, just as she was ready to give up in despair there appeared the smallest of indentations. Amazed, she moved her head closer to investigate this change, when she realized that a small horn at the tip of her nose would be perfect for further damaging the area.

After the first sign of weakness it was not long at all before she managed to break a hole in the wall. There! A hole! So there was something on the other side! With this realization she experienced a new feeling. This feeling was like the gnawing, but it was in her mind, not her body. In all her life of comfort and security, she never understood needs, but now there was a need in her head as great as the need in her belly, and its demand to be filled just as undeniable. This new feeling spurred her on to an even greater effort, the mind-gnawing powering her actions, giving her strength even as it consumed her thoughts.

After an existence of utter contentment and stagnation, now she faced change. First there was hunger. Then there was fear. And now, for the first time, she knew curiosity.

The more damage she did to what was once her home, now her prison, the easier it was to do more. She pushed and prodded and scratched and tore at the walls and bit by bit, the hole got larger until, with a supreme effort, she finally forced herself through the white walls of her universe into whatever it was that was beyond.

Despite all her gnawings such a supreme effort left her too exhausted to look around at first. When finally she could move again she noted how huge this new universe was, a universe of grays and browns rather than white. To think, her entire world was once contained in this! And looking beyond, she could see that this world, too, had a hole in it, a rather large one that looked out at something so endless she could not yet grasp it... so instead she turned away and found she was not alone.

Looking up, she saw others like herself only much, much larger. They towered over her to such an extent that she probably should have been frightened but somehow, instinctively, she knew that these others would not harm her. They would, in fact, protect her and help to feed the hunger in her belly and mind. They looked down on her with varying expressions of pride and joy, and this made her proud, too.

She looked over at the shell of her egg, the remainder of her shattered universe, and was filled with satisfaction of her accomplishment. She had broken free, and as a result, made her world that much larger. In joy and pride, the new-hatched dragon threw back her head and crowed.


	2. A Most Dangerous Animal

Tyrei screamed as she plummeted towards the earth, frenzied feelings of betrayal racing through her mind. _Why did she do this?_ she wondered. _How could she? I thought Momma loved me!_ Tears of terror and despair flew from her eyes as she continued her downward plunge.

Suddenly, she came to a gentle halt not far above the ground. Tyrei looked around, confused, and saw that her mother had caught her at the last moment and was now raising them both back up into the sky. The little dragon breathed a sigh of relief. "Oh, Momma! I was so scared! Please, please, Momma, don’t do that again!"

The elder dragon sighed. "I will, my dear. I have to. It’s time you learned the use of your wings, as all our kind must. Why, your brother has been flying for almost a year! But you needn’t fear so much... you should know that I would never let harm come to you. I’ll always be here to catch you."

"But Momma!" Tyrei protested, "What if I slip! What if you don’t catch me in time? What if-" In response, Tyrei’s mother simply sighed, shook her head, and once more opened her claws, releasing her daughter yet again. Tyrei screamed.

This went on for some time, Tyrei falling towards earth in a state of panicked terror, only to be caught at the last moment by her mother who would fly her back up to their starting altitude to begin again. After the fourth or fifth time, simple experience was beginning to wear away at the edges of her fear, and by the eighth time she was no longer panicking and instead consciously trying to figure out how to work her little wings.

"You’re trying too hard," chided her Mother after the tenth trip. "This is not something you think about so much as feel. Birds do it, and they’re not one thousandth as bright as us." The elder sighed. "I suppose this has been enough for today, dear. Come, we’ll return home to rest, and try again tomorrow."

Another day of this? Not if Tyrei could help it! "No, momma!" she protested. "One more time, please. I’m sure I’ve almost got it, but I feel like I’ll forget if we stop now!"

The larger dragon’s huge wings beat ponderously as they worked to keep her more or less steady, while at the same time her mind worked to process her daughter’s request. If she wanted to go now, they had better take the opportunity before the reluctant little dragon could change her mind again! "Very well," she answered, before dropping her daughter for the eleventh time.

This time, Tyrei didn’t even keep her eyes open. She spread her wings, but still she tumbled virtually uncontrolled. What was she doing wrong? _Don’t think... don’t think..._ she told herself. And as she stopped worrying about how to right herself, she found her tail moving out almost of its own accord to counter-balance her fall. Less than a second later, she had steadied herself and then, less than a second after that, she was no longer moving straight down, but gliding!

Her mother roared with approval as she joined her daughter. "Very good, Tyrei! Very good! But now, try flapping your wings- slowly, not too quickly, don’t wear yourself- try moving yourself up, and not down."

Tyrei could hardly believe she was doing it. "I- I’ll try, momma!" She moved her wings a little too quickly at first, which unbalanced her a bit. Her tail automatically adjusted to compensate, however, and all she needed to do was slow down the beating just a bit, and there! She was rising! Now that she got down to it, it was all so easy! She could hardly believe she had spent the entire day trying to figure this out. It was absolutely, completely... "Momma!" she shouted, "Flying is wonderful!"

The elder rumbled a deep chuckle that would have shaken their home cavern, had they been in there. "I know, dear, I know. Let’s practice a little while, shall we? And then we’ll head home."

They flew on for a short time, Tyrei marveling the whole time at the incredible tapestry of green beneath her, sometimes shot through with glittering snakes of rivers, sometimes interrupted by patches of lighter green or of brown, and there, up ahead... "Look, Momma. Smoke! Is that another dragon down there?"

Her mother gasped as she looked down. "No, that’s no dragon, dear. That’s a patch of human hills! And so close to our caves, too... we’ll have to keep an eye on this infestation."

"Do they breathe fire like we do, Momma? Is that why there’s smoke?"

"Well, dear, they do seem to have some rudimentary ability to make fire, but it’s no where near as advanced as our own ability."

"What are they like? Can I go take a look?"

"No! No, dear, you mustn’t! Stay far, far away from the little wooden human caves. They are a most dangerous animal!"

"But they look so small from up here! I bet they’re not so dangerous to creatures like us!"

"Oh, they are small, this is true, but they are also one of the most cunning of the dumb beasts. They can coordinate their hunting, like the packs of wolves Uncle Elrys told you about, and some of them have very strong metal-like shells and long, sharp claws. A single one of these warrior-humans has been known to take out a full-grown dragon, all on their own!"

"Has no one tried talking to them?"

The elder dragon roared with laughter. "Talking to them? Oh, goodness, no! They don’t speak! They’re just animals, dear, much like the herd-beasts we thrive on. They’re clever animals, true enough, but they don’t have real feelings and they don’t think. Humans don’t love their children as we do, and they don’t have souls. Only we dragons are special in that way."

Tyrei looked down, and it never occurred to her to doubt her mother. After all, wasn’t Mother always right about everything? Even today, when she had dropped Tyrei several thousand feet towards the ground, repeatedly, she had shown she was right in the end. "Oh. Okay." She flew on in silence for a bit longer before looking back up at her mother. "Momma?"

"Yes, dear?"

"I think I’m getting tired."

The larger dragon smiled fondly at her child. "Then let’s go home."


	3. Humans Do Have Feelings

Tyrei stirred slightly at the noise, shifted positions on the warm rock she was sunning herself on, and tried to go back to sleep. Then the noise came again, an animal cry with a sort of gulping undertone, and she decided she really ought to investigate. She had been sunning herself in a small clearing of an otherwise dense forest, and was rather closer to the human infestation than her mother liked her to be. It was, unfortunately, the best place to go when she wanted to be alone for a while and besides, mothers, wise as they were, didn’t know **everything**.

The young dragon slipped off the rock and into the forest with a mere whisper of sound, stirring the leaves less than a stray gust of wind. Despite their size, dragons could be extraordinarily quiet when they wished, and little Tyrei was one of the quietest. She slid noiselessly through the branches, heading cautiously but steadily towards the source of the strange sound. As she got closer she began hearing another noise in between the calls, a mournful, sobbing noise, almost like... crying?

Finally she was upon the cause of the disturbance. Although she was careful to remain hidden from sight, what she found almost shocked her enough to cause her to reveal herself anyway. A human! She had seen them before from afar, but never one so close. This particular specimen seemed even smaller then most of its kind, and it wandered the dark woods, its face and body language seeming to radiate confusion, fear, and sadness all at once. _Their faces are so expressive!_ Tyrei thought. _How odd, for an animal incapable of having feelings, to have features that give the illusion of possessing them!_ The human, a clumsy little thing with longer hair than much of its kind and a brightly colored outer layer, paused in its search to call out once. This final cry ended when it broke down in a fit of sobbing and collapsed to its knees. Tyrei was somewhat taken aback by the display. _What is wrong with the creature? Is it lost? Is it hungry? Has it something in its eyes?_

She watched for some time, her curiosity getting the best of her common sense, and tried to figure out what, if anything, she should do about the situation. The little voice in her mind that sounded like her mother chided her, reminding her that humans were but dangerous animals and that the best course would be to sneak away now before she was noticed. The voice that was her own, however, was touched by the display and goaded her to try and do something, anything, to soothe the little creature. For just a moment she even entertained the idea of picking the thing up and carrying it to the nearby colony, even though she knew she’d have to spend virtually forever cleaning herself after touching such a dirty creature. The worry of how others of its kind would react when she dropped the tiny animal off never even entered her mind.

Fortunately, she was saved from having to make such a drastic decision by the arrival of two larger humans. When they came into view one of them, the more slender of the two, made a soft sound, just loud enough to attract the little one’s attention. The little one looked up and her expression was transformed instantly from sorrow to joy. It picked itself up off the ground and immediately flung itself at the larger two, embracing them as much as its little arms allowed it to. The slender-tall human embraced her in return, its face conveying relief, while the bulkier creature made scolding noises directed at the smallest one. Slender-tall tutted Bulky with lips curled into... amusement? Yes, that looked like amusement. Bulky looked stern a moment longer before breaking into a smile, and then he playfully ruffled the top of Little-one’s long head-fur. At that he turned and began to move off towards the settlement, while Slender-tall took a moment to brush dirt off of Little-one’s outer-layer before following.

Even though the humans were quickly out of sight, it was a very long time before Tyrei stirred. She kept mulling over every detail of the display she had just watched. In her mind she took each little detail out, turned it over and over to examine all its sides and edges, and looked to see how they fitted together into a whole. When she put all the pieces together she could only come to one conclusion, one that flew in the face of everything even the wisest of her elders taught her and called much of the philosophy of her kind into question: humans do have feelings.


	4. Humans Do Think

Tyrei sped joyfully through the forest in a weird fly-jump-run-gallop, dodging trees and branches as she led her pursuers on a merry chase. She was tottering at the borderline between childhood and adult, at that age when all young dragons were certain that their mothers knew nothing, and she expressed her disregard in a dangerous game that would have resulted in her being grounded to her cave until the stars fell from the sky if her mother ever found out about it.

She called the game "dodge the humans", and it was an incredible thrill. Some days she played against her brother, Gire, but usually she played alone. To play, she skulked around the forests looking for human hunting packs and then playing tricks on them as she fled, keeping close enough to the ground to give them a "sporting chance" until either they became too worn to continue the chase or she grew bored with the game and flew off. It was an incredible challenge, as the humans were every bit as clever as the elders had claimed (making that one of the few points were she and the elders agreed).

In fact, they were so clever that Tyrei sometimes wondered: how could they really be unintelligent? Humans were considered so dangerous that few dragons took the time to observe them closely, but she had become fairly certain that many of their so-called "natural abilities" actually came about through the use of tools. For example, the metal-tipped sticks of wood that they occasionally flung at her had to have been crafted. Oh, sure, the elders spoke of other animals that could fling spikes but wood and metal? It certainly didn’t seem likely!

Tyrei’s breathing quickened as one of those very same sticks came a bit close to comfort, and she veered away to the left, nimbly dodging a tree. Before she got very far in her new direction another group of humans, part of the pack that had broken off from the main earlier, appeared before here, forcing her back to the right. One, two, three more such close calls, and a vague sense of dread began to gnaw at her as a realization dawned: they were herding her!

A surge of fury briefly over-road her dread _. How dare they?_ she thought. _Small, pathetic **humans** , daring to herd a **dragon**? Who do they think they are? _But that was the problem. It didn’t matter what they thought they were, the point is, they thought. There was no longer any question in Tyrei’s mind. And if they thought, that meant it was now time to end this game.

Her muscles tightened as she prepared for the final leap into the sky. Then, just as she began her spring, one of the sticks lodged itself in her left flank, causing everything to go wrong. She yowled in agony and instead of flying up, rushed forward, crashing painfully through the branches in front of her before forcing her way into a clearing, the same clearing where she had sunned herself in the youth, before the humans had happened upon her there.

Another human stood in front of her! It was a trap! Though she didn’t want to kill one of the little creatures (the elders claimed that humans were all sorts of trouble if one of their numbers were killed, and Tyrei suspected they might actually be accurate on that account), it was slay or be slain. She raised her right-front talons and prepared to strike, then stopped suddenly. This one had none of the humans’ "natural" weapons, and what was more, Tyrei recognized it! It- she, actually- was the very same little human she spied not far from here when she was younger, the very first human she had ever seen up-close. Tyrei lowered her foreleg and looked at the creature. Their eyes met. There was no expression of fear on the human’s face, only... curiosity. Tyrei simply nodded once and took off, escaping just as her pursuers burst into the clearing.


	5. Humans Do Love Their Children

A mournful crooning emerged from the dragon clan's cave and swept across the countryside. That which the dragons had feared since the human infestation had first moved near the cave had finally come to pass. One of the elders, Tyrei's own mother, was dead, and now the survivors must choose between warring with the little creatures or abandoning their ancestral home.

"Mother..." whispered Tyrei as she nuzzled the body of the older female. "I'm so sorry..."

Uncle Elrys looked down sadly at the guilt stricken young dragon, no longer a child, barely an adult. "You mustn't blame yourself, Tyrei," he rumbled.

"But maybe... if I hadn't stirred them up..."

Elrys shook his head. "No. They're humans. Curious little beasties. They would have found us eventually."

"But... but..."

"It's not your fault," snapped Tyrei's brother, Gire. "You need to get that through your head. It wasn't you... it was those... wretched little... monsters."

Elrys sighed. "They're just animals, Gire, doing what comes naturally to them. They see us as a threat."

Tyrei sighed and said softly, "But Uncle, they're not just animals. I've been watching them. They can think and feel, they use tools... The hard shell that one had wasn't just a natural, metal-like covering. That really was made of metal. They can work the stuff!"

Gire snarled. "If they're not just animals, they're murderers! It's time we cleaned out that infestation once and for all."

Elrys shook his head. "No, it won't work. Others have tried that tact before with humans. Eventually, more come. You wipe them out, and more come, and more... Eventually they overwhelm you. A meeting of the elders will be held tonight to decide what to do, but my vote will be to withdraw."

"Couldn't we try communicating with them?" asked Tyrei. "Make them realize that we mean them no harm?"

"Tyrei, honey, I know what you think, but I'm telling you, they're animals."

"They're monsters," growled Gire. "I can't believe you're going to just give into them."

"But we just can't kill them," complained Tyrei. "Not all of them are at fault!"

"Enough," hissed Elrys. "This isn't for you two to decide. I've said it before. Tonight the Elders decide what to do. But all dragons have been told to remain in the caverns until the matter is settled. Is that understood?"

The two young adults nodded, and the conversation was ended. But the matter was far from settled.

* * *

Tyrei desperately chased her brother through the night. Earlier that night she had tried to find Gire to speak with him but had found his room empty. It hadn't taken her long to figure out that he had flown off to extract revenge from the human settlement, and she immediately took off to stop him. When she arrived at the settlement several of the buildings were already burning, and Gire was chasing a small group of them down the dusty main road.

She had tried to stop the bigger, stronger dragon, but he had snarled and snapped at her, accusing her of being a traitor to her species. Then he snatched up the nearest human, a familiar female with long hair, and flew off.

Tyrei stayed on just a moment longer, watching the hysterics of another older, also familiar female: the other one's mother. She took off a moment later. She didn't know how she would do it, but she had to stop her brother. The loss of their mother hurt her as much as it did him, but killing the little human, depriving the mother of her daughter, would fix nothing. After all, humans loved their children, too.


	6. Humans Do Have Souls

Fortunately, Gire had worn himself down with his initial attack against the human settlement. Otherwise, Tyrei would never have been able to catch up with him.

"Gire, wait! You have to stop this! That little human didn’t kill our mother, and you’re only going to stir up their nest if you keep this up!"

Gire’s long, serpentine neck twisted so he could look back at his sister. "Why do you protect them?" he howled, blowing a thin jet of blue-hot flame back towards his clutch-mate to emphasize his point.

Tyrei gasped and ducked her head so that the flame could only singe her left ear and cause small burns on one of her head-crests. "Dammit, Gire! Be reasonable!" she growled as she further closed the distance between the two. In an attempt to slow him down she reached out her head and chomped down hard on the end of his tail.

Gire hissed and swung around quickly, swiping at Tyrei with his free hand. The near miss forced the smaller dragon to let go of his tail, and she adjusted her wings to slow down her forward flight. This was hardly the two young dragons’ first fight. After all, they were siblings, and if you can’t breath fire on your family, who can you breath fire on? But this was the first time the two were out to really hurt one another. This was the first time that their mother wouldn’t be waiting at home to make it all better when it was over.

Gire, realizing that he wouldn’t be able to out fly his sister, instead turned to face her, the two flapping their leather like wings at a faster pace to allow for hovering. "Why are you doing this, Tyrei? Why do you care? One of their kind killed our mother! What does it matter what whether or not this one was involved?"

Tyrei sighed. "Because, Gire, they’re not just dumb animals. They think. I think... I’m sure... that they’ve even got souls, and to kill an innocent human would be as wrong as to kill an innocent dragon."

Gire snarled again. "But an innocent dragon is dead, anyway. Our mother is dead! And now the elders are talking of us just turning tail and running from the killer! I will **not** run away from these tiny, pathetic little-"

Before Gire could finish his sentence Tyrei lunged for him, making a grab for the small female held in his right talon. In response Gire lifted the creature up and out of Tyrei’s reach as he grabbed his sister with his left foreleg and bit down hard on the side of her neck. Tyrei screamed in pain but instead of backing away tried to move closer, clawing her brother with her back paws as she tried to climb up him towards the captive mammal.

Thus tangled together the siblings began to plummet but even then neither relented. Teeth were bared and bloodied, hand-like fore-claws held close in a perversion of a hug, back legs raked against underbellies, and tails lashed wildly as enormous wings beat uselessly against gravity. The fight and fall lasted only a few seconds, but they felt like an eternity as Tyrei inched her way towards the human.

Just as Tyrei was just about to grab the girl from her brother’s claws when he dropped her. "No!" she screeched, pushing herself away from Gire before she dived after the tumbling biped. Gire looked down after his sister. Later, he would calm down and come to regret their fight and the damage he did her, but now feelings of anger and betrayal still held sway. He gave the smaller dragon one last sneer of disgust before turning and flying away, perhaps to work off his frustration by burning down a few trees.

Tyrei intensified her dive, trying desperately to reach the human in enough time to save her. It seemed luck was with the dragon that day, as the diminutive mammal hadn’t had that much of a head start making it easy to catch up with her. Tyrei had to actually pass the girl so that the dragon could turn herself upright, matching the creature’s pace at first in order to soften the stop as much as possible. Even so, when it was finally over Tyrei was exhausted, and a quick glance down proved that she had finished just in time.

Tyrei dropped heavily the last few feet to the ground and then leaned forward, setting the minute female down gently. She examined the girl as carefully as she could and determined that, although she was shaken and badly bruised, she would probably recover. She smiled at the smaller sentient while the human returned her gaze with a look of wonder. Suddenly, all the tension Tyrei had felt over the last few days was released at once, and Tyrei opened her mouth to let out a few rumbling dragon-chuckles of relief.

And that’s when the arrow pierced her throat.


	7. Broken Shells

Tyrei looked down at the scene before her with a vague sense of puzzlement. There was the female, still young, although now that Tyrei had a chance to get a good look at things she suspected that she might actually be fully-grown. Tyrei couldn’t be sure; it was so hard to tell with humans! Not too far behind her was another human, a metal-clad male with a wood-spike-slinger in his hands ( _Bow,_ Tyrei corrected herself. _That is called a bow, and the wood-spikes are arrows_ ) and a long steel-claw ( _sword_ ) at his belt.

And in front of the female, laying in a pool of dark dragon-blood, was... Tyrei. Tyrei was looking at _herself_ from the _outside!_

"I had hoped not to see you again so soon, my dear," said an achingly familiar voice from behind Tyrei.

"Mother!" cried Tyrei, and for a moment, nothing else mattered. The younger dragon spun around and happily tackled the elder, nuzzling with her head and using her wings to envelope her loved one in a huge dragon hug. Tyrei’s mother returned her affection until the truth of the situation finally dawned on the smaller reptile, causing Tyrei to pull back in shock. She looked up, wide-eyed. "I’m dead, aren’t I?"

Mother nodded somewhat sadly. "Yes, little one."

"Oh." Tyrei looked back again at her own body, and the little humans still in front of it. They seemed to be... arguing? "Strange... I don’t feel frightened at all."

"Death tends to seem a lot less frightening after the fact."

Tyrei sighed as she watched the mammals. "I had to do it, Momma. I hope you understand. I had to try to save the female, and I’d do it again, even if I knew what would have happened. You... you were wrong about them. They do have souls; you can even see them from this side of life."

"I know, sweet one. I see, and I understand. It is not what I would have done, but you could not have done anything besides that which you did and still be my darling Tyrei."

"But wait, Mother!" Tyrei looked up in alarm. "We have to find some way to tell the others! They have to try to talk to the humans! They know what will happen if they try and chase these humans away; humans breed too fast. And they learn fast, too. I’ve talked with some of the oldest dragons; over time, the humans’ tools have gotten better and better. If we chase these ones away, more will come, until we’re overwhelmed, but even if we leave, eventually we’ll have the same problem. The only solution is to make peace with them!"

Mother sighed. "I fear it is no longer a matter of ‘we’. You and I are not part of things. I think, perhaps, your ‘wild stories’ of the small mammals interested some of the other younglings enough to start them asking questions, and with luck some will eventually start asking the same questions you did, and get the same answers. But even that will do little good if none of the humans can be made to see that we think and feel and love as much as they."

"Is there nothing we can do?"

A bittersweet smile crept onto the corners of the elder dragon’s mouth. "We can hope."

A silence fell as the two ghosts watched the mammals finish their discussion and begin to leave. The female cast one last look back at the huge dragon body and said something softly in her own language before walking off. After she left Tyrei took the time to more carefully examine the world around her. It was the same world, but somehow different, the details sharper and the colors deeper and truer than ever they had seemed before. It was somehow more real. "I feel... I feel new-hatched."

A soft chuckle escaped the elder. "You are. Now come, my dear!" she shouted as she leapt into the air. "It’s time you learned to fly!"

Tyrei grinned and bounded after her. She quickly found that without the encumbrance of her body she could soar faster and higher than ever she had before. Why, I don’t even need my wings anymore! she thought.

And the two dragons flew higher and higher, past the trees, past the birds, before breaking out of the great white clouds themselves, and still they flew higher. They flew so high that the whole great world became a blue and white egg beneath them, and Tyrei knew she would finally touch the very stars that she could only have watched through holes in they sky before.

And a small part in the back of Tyrei’s mind sensed the pattern, and thought, I wonder what world will be beyond this one?


	8. Epilogue

> _"Neither could speak to the other and in a moment the Sea Girl had dropped astern. But Lucy will never forget her face. ... In that one moment they had somehow become friends. There does not seem to be much chance of their meeting again in that world or any other. But if ever they do they will rush together with their hands held out."_
> 
> _\- C. S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader_

Jenna spun angrily on her supposed rescuer. "What’d you do that for? It just saved me!"

"Saved you for a nice afternoon snack, more like," grumbled the man. Really! Why did these people even bother to call in a dragon slayer if they didn’t want him to slay any dragons?

Jenna shook her head. "No... I’ve seen that one before. It used to play games and tricks on our hunting parties, but it never harmed any of us, even when it had a chance to."

The man looked at the young woman sympathetically. "Look, miss, I can see you’re a bit shook up from the ordeal, and obviously you’re not thinking too straight. Now c’mon. We need to get you back to your village and get you taken care of. You all right to walk?"

"Yes," growled Jenna as she stalked off towards home, refusing the older man’s attempts to help her.

"No need to be angry. Now look, miss, I’ve dealt with dragons all my life, and I know what they’re like. Sure, they’re clever animals, but they’re just that: animals! Beasties don’t have a thought in their heads beyond their next meal. If this one fought that other one for you, it’s just ‘cause it wanted you for itself."

"No, you’re wrong," Jenna murmured softly, too soft for the man to hear. She looked back at the empty shell of what she knew had been, strange as it seems, a friend. "She had a soul."

**Author's Note:**

> This is an ancient work of mine from around 2000, and may well be my only completed original work? I've changed a lot since then, as you'd expect would happen in two decades, but I decided it was past time for me to gather all my old works together under one account.
> 
> No editing or updating was done except for formatting.


End file.
